There are differences between Cuba's IT professional society and the Association for Computing Machinery in the US.
The formation of the Unión de Informáticos de Cuba (UIC) was announced during a plenary session at the First National Workshop on Computerization and Cybersecurity in Havana. Over 7,500 computer professionals also watched via a teleconference (no mean feat in Cuba).
My first reaction upon hearing the news was "cool -- it's a professional society like our Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)," but after reading more I realize that there are differences between ACM and UIC, reflecting cultural/bureaucratic differences between the US and Cuba and the fact that ACM was established 68 years ago. Let's look at some of the differences.
ACM is a professional society -- it's tagline is "advancing computing as a science and a profession" -- while UIC feels like a professional/political organization. As Yoani Sanchez points out, the membership application form asks for political affiliations like membership in the Communist Party or Young Communist Union. Can you imagine ACM asking whether a member is a Republican or Democrat?
The UIC membership application asks for political affiliations (red added).
People have to apply to be accepted into the UIC and they may be dropped for infractions like violation of the code of ethics. An applicant has to complete a form by July 15, attach a photo, copy of their diploma and a CV, then wait to see if the application is accepted. Bill Gates or Steve Jobs could not have applied and I am not sure if, say, a biologist who did computer modeling would be eligible.
One joins ACM by filling out the following form online and paying the first year dues.
Members are expected to have either a bachelor's degree, the equivalent level of education or two years full-time employment in the IT field, but no one checks up on this. There is also an optional profile in which one specifies professional specialties and interests, but the information is used for allocating ACM resources (and perhaps selling ads), not for screening applicants.
The UIC is a Cuban organization, open only to Cubans, while ACM is global, with chapters in 57 nations.
ACM has 138 active chapters
ACM reaches out to young people via student chapters on college campuses and, while UIC does not yet have student chapters, Cuba devotes significant resources to training potential computer users and professionals via a well-established system of Youth Computer Clubs (YCCs). The government established 32 YCCs in 1987 and today over 2.25 million kids and adults have completed courses (and played games) at 611 YCCs.
ACM offers concrete benefits including the monthly Communications of the ACM magazine, online access to articles, books, videos, webinars and courses and membership in over 170 special interest groups. ACM was formed in 1947 so they have had 68 years to organize and capitalize -- what will UIC be offering members 68 years from now?
Minister of Higher Education (MES), Rodolfo Alarcón Ortiz, has authorized on-campus Internet access for all teachers, researchers and students at the universities of Havana (UH), Computer Science (UCI) and the East and at the Higher Polytechnic Institute Jose Antonio Echevarria (CUJAE). They will also provide dial-up access from the homes of the faculty, researchers and students.
While encouraging, the brief announcment (in a letter to the universities) offers no detail information on the plan. For example, it says nothing about the speed of the connections from the universities to the Internet. In an earlier post, I suggested several short-term steps Cuba could take to improve connectivity. One of those was to provide backbone connectivity linking universities to the undersea cable and I hope that will be the case for these schools. If the MES can provide high speed links to the campuses, students and staff can deploy local area networks to utilize them.
(Do any readers know what sort of connectivity these universities have today)?
Earlier this month, the Ministry of Education announced plans to provide Internet connectivity to all schools from day-care centers through high school during the next three years. Together, these announcements indicate that Cuba is giving educational connetivity priority.
Believe it or not -- there is bipartisan support for bill in the U. S. Senate.
The dueling bills are:
The Cuban U.S. Claims Settlement Act: U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and David Vitter (R-LA) have introduced legislation that would require Cuba to address unsettled and unpaid legal claims with the U.S. before easing restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba.
Versus
The Cuba Digital and Telecommunications Advancement Act (DATA): U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) have introduced bipartisan legislation that would enable U.S. telecommunications and Internet companies to provide their services and devices in Cuba.
And
On December 17, 2014, the Whitehouse published a fact sheet called Charting a New Course on Cuba saying that "Telecommunications providers will be allowed to establish the necessary mechanisms, including infrastructure, in Cuba to provide commercial telecommunications and Internet services, which will improve telecommunications between the United States and Cuba."
I am no politician, but here are a couple observations.
DATA is a way better acronym than CUCSA
The DATA act sounds redundant, but the next president or the courts could reverse President Obama's Cuba policy.
The Helms-Burton act prohibits "the investment by any United States person in the domestic telecommunications network within Cuba."
The appropriations bill released on Tuesday would restrict funds to facilitate the opening of a Cuban embassy in the United States, increase democracy assistance and international broadcasting to Cuba and provide direction to the State Department on denying visas to members of the Cuban military and Communist Party.
----- Update 6/5/2015
The House of Representatives has passed a transportation funding bill that includes a provision to reverse the Obama administration's easing of restrictions on travel to Cuba -- travellers would again require a license from the Treasury Department as they had in the past.
The Republican rationale is that portions of the Havana airport were expropriated by Cuban government. The White House has threatened to veto the bill, in part because of the Cuba-related provision.
I don't know what all the transportation bill deals with, but it is surely a lot more than just this "poison pill" issue.
----- Update 6/12/2015
U.S. Senators Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Angus King (I-Maine) have introduced legislation to restore trade with Cuba. The Cuba Trade Act of 2015 (S. 1543) would grant the private sector the freedom to export U.S. goods and services to Cuba while protecting U.S. taxpayers from any risk or exposure associated with such trade.
The senators seem to have different motivations for sponsoring the bill. Senator Moran is attracted to the bill by the possibility of exporting Kansas farm and ranch produce to Cuba and Senator King is worried about the growing influence of China in Cuba.
Three visiting U.S. senators said on Saturday they hoped Congress would support President Barack Obama's opening toward Cuba, including lifting a ban on U.S. citizens traveling to the Communist-run island.
Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Ben Cardin of Maryland joined Republican Dean Heller of Nevada on a trip to Cuba where they met First Vice-President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and ordinary Cubans.
----- Update 7/20/2015
Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. and Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., on Monday announced they will introduce the Cuba DATA Act, a bill that would enable U.S. telecommunications and Internet firms to offer more services in Cuba. We now have versions of the Cuban DATA Act before both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
A bill with bi-partisan support is unusual, but this one is not surprising since 2/3 of the US public favors ending the embargo. (These bills stop short of repealing the embargo -- they seek to exempt a single industry).
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to allow Americans to travel to Cuba and to block enforcement of a law prohibiting banks and other U.S. businesses from financing sales of U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba. Four Republicans joined the 14 Committee Democrats in an 18-12 vote.
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said "This is a first step by the Senate to dismantle a failed, discredited and counterproductive policy that in 54 years has failed to achieve any of its objectives ... These votes were not about the repugnant policies of the Castro regime, but about doing away with unwarranted impediments to travel and commerce imposed on Americans by our own government."
A growing number of lawmakers from both parties have taken promising steps in that direction in recent weeks. Representatives Tom Emmer, Republican of Minnesota, and Kathy Castor, Democrat of Florida, introduced a bill in the House last week that would lift the embargo. Earlier last month, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed amendments that would allow American citizens to travel to Cuba freely and ease some commercial interactions.
A Pew Research Center poll released on July 21 showed that 72 percent of Americans support ending the embargo against Cuba, up from 66 percent in January.
----- Update 8/12/2015
A new Pew poll shows US support for ending the Cuban embargo has climbed to 77% and 76% of the Latin Americans polled agree.
But, they are not certain that Cuba will become more democratic:
----- Update 10/21/2015
Nine US governors have called for an end to the embargo -- and two of them are Republicans. This seems to be the only issue with any bi-partisan support in the US congress. I guess these folks are thinking about both doing business with Cuba and public opinion (see poll results above).
----- Update 1/13/2016
President Obama called for an end to the Cuban trade embargo in his State of the Union address. The American public also favors ending the embargo and this is one of the few (only?) issues with some bi-partisan support, so it is conceivable that he will get his wish.
The 2001 Brussels Jurisdiction Regulation, like its predecessor the Brussels Convention, requires a jurisdiction agreement to be in writing or evidenced by writing. In an attempt to update the writing requirement for the electronic age, the Regulation added a new gloss. Article 23(2) provides that “any communication by electronic means which provides a durable record of the agreement” shall be equivalent to writing.
The CarsOnTheWeb click-wrap process provided a box to accept its terms and conditions. The terms and conditions themselves, containing the choice of court provision, were behind a hyperlink with the rubric ‘click here to open the conditions of delivery and payment in a new window’. The CJEU analysed the process:
“it is an essential feature of the facts of the case in the main proceedings that a potential purchaser must expressly accept the seller’s general terms of sale by clicking the relevant box before making a purchase. However, that operation does not automatically lead to the opening of the document containing the seller’s general terms, as an extra click on a specific hyperlink for that purpose is still necessary.” [21]
El Majdoub argued that the process did not provide a durable record of the agreement, since a window containing the terms and conditions was not automatically created.
The CJEU disagreed. Clicking on the relevant box expressly accepted the terms and conditions. Because the terms and conditions could be saved or printed, that possibility of creating a durable record was sufficient regardless of whether the purchaser actually durably recorded the terms and conditions.
The CJEU considered its 2012 decision in Content Services (Case C‑49/11). In that case it held that a hyperlink to terms and conditions did not satisfy the Distance Selling Directive (now superseded by the Consumer Rights Directive) requirement that a consumer should receive written confirmation or confirmation in another durable medium. Distinguishing Content Services, the Court said in CarsOnTheWeb:
“both the wording of Article 5(1) of Directive 97/7, which expressly requires the communication of information to consumers in a durable medium, and the objective of that provision, which is specifically consumer protection, differ from those of Article 23(2).”
Requirements of form have a long history. They tend to be technology-specific, causing problems when an unforeseen new technology arrives.
In the case of durable form the EU legislature has sought to identify the essence of an old technology requirement – writing - and translate it into a new medium.
The risk with that approach is that the newly articulated formality does not accurately reflect the characteristics of the previous technology and, when interpreted, may turn out to be more onerous rather than technology-neutral.
In Content Servicesthe CJEU said:
“a substitute for paper form may be regarded as capable of meeting the requirements of the protection of the consumer so long as it fulfils the same functions as paper form.”
It went on:
“Where a medium allows the consumer to store the information which has been addressed to him personally, ensures that its content is not altered and that the information is accessible for an adequate period, and gives consumers the possibility to reproduce it unchanged, that medium must be regarded as ‘durable’ within the meaning of that provision.”
Paper, however, is not tamperproof. Some paper is flimsy. The Australian Electronic Commerce Expert Group identified the risk of overstating the qualities of previous technology in its 1998 Report to the Attorney-General:
“There is always the temptation, in dealing with the law as it relates to unfamiliar and new technologies to set the standards required of a new technology higher than those which currently apply to paper and to overlook the weaknesses that we know to inhere in the familiar.”
While the CJEU’s decision in CarsOnTheWeb is welcome, it is debatable whether the court should have had to interpret a requirement of form based on durability in the first place.
In 1954 England had the good sense to repeal most of S.4 of the Statute of Frauds, the 1677 legislation that rendered a variety of contracts unenforceable without a signed note or memorandum in writing. At the same time S.4 of the Sale of Goods Act 1893, which required writing as a condition of the enforceability of contracts for the sale of goods of the value of £10 or upwards, was repealed.
These reforms followed the recommendations of an official Committee in 1937, which had observed:
“'The Act', in the words of Lord Campbell . . . 'promotes more frauds than it prevents'. True it shuts out perjury; but it also and more frequently shuts out the truth. It strikes impartially at the perjurer and at the honest man who has omitted a precaution, sealing the lips of both. Mr Justice FitzJames Stephen ... went so far as to assert that 'in the vast majority of cases its operation is simply to enable a man to break a promise with impunity, because he did not write it down with sufficient formality.’ ”
Even in England, a relatively liberal jurisdiction in this regard, some requirements of form remain. Section 4 of the 1677 Act still applies to guarantees. Requirements of signature, writing and the like apply to some specific types of transaction such as an assignment of copyright.
Consumer protection laws, such as those regulating consumer credit, tend to impose detailed formalities. Even when adapted to the electronic environment, such requirements of form can still pose vexing questions. In Bassano v Toft (2014) the court considered whether an electronically generated document had been signed by clicking on an ‘I accept’ button, and if so whether the signature was in "the space in the document indicated for the purpose", as required by the applicable consumer credit regulations. Popplewell J held that both were satisfied:
“the word "I" can be treated as being the mark which is unambiguously that of Mrs Bassano affixed for the purposes of authenticating and agreeing to be bound by the terms of the document”.
In the 1990s requirements of form began to be perceived as an obstacle to electronic commerce. What constituted writing or signature in an electronic environment? How do you satisfy a legibility requirement when the consumer controls the screen display? What constitutes a document? Mr Justice Lightman gave an answer to that question in 1999 in Victor Chandler International v HM Customs and Excise:
“In summary, a document is a material object which contains information capable of extraction from it (e.g. a tape so long as it is not blank). Mr Oliver (Counsel for VCI) properly disavowed that he was a document: the repository of information must be inanimate: neither a person nor A.P. Herbert's "negotiable cow" (referred to in Uncommon Law, p.201) can constitute a document.)”
Some legislative initiatives such as the US Uniform Electronic Transactions Act promulgated in 1999, followed by the federal E-SIGN Act in 2000, sought to facilitate electronic transactions by rendering requirements of form, as far as possible, medium-neutral. As the Chair of the UETA Drafting Committee, Patricia Blumfeld Fry, memorably explained:
“. . . UETA preserves the requirements concerning the manner of sending, posting, displaying, formatting, etc. contained in other State law. If other State law requires information to be furnished in a conspicuous manner, UETA §8 states that you can furnish the information electronically, but must do so in a conspicuous manner. If other State law requires the information to appear in purple ink sprinkled with glitter, you can furnish the information electronically only if you can assure that it appear to the recipient in purple sprinkled with glitter."
The UK Electronic Communications Act 2000 took a different approach, providing a power to amend existing legislation piecemeal to facilitate electronic transactions. In 2001 a Law Commission Advice increased confidence that e-mails and website trading were capable of satisfying formal requirements of writing and signature. Subsequent court decisions have confirmed the traditionally liberal English view of what can constitute a signature including, for instance, typing one’s name at the end of an e-mail.
The first meetup of the Merchise Startup Circle will be held in Havana on May 23. The event is being organized by a couple of Cubans who have worked abroad and hope this is the first of many meetings for people interested in startups, tech and entrepreneurship.
Can Cuba develop a vibrant tech startup community? Cuba may be short on financial capital, but that be raised fairly quickly -- Cuba's human capital has taken years to develop.
A successful software industry requires trained, demanding users and skilled technicians and Cuba's long-standing emphasis on education leaves them with both. As an indication of their commitment to education, Cuba spends 12.8% of its GDP on education -- the highest rate in the world -- and the Cuban literacy rate is 100%.
The United Nations Development Program reports a human development index (HDI) for every nation annually. The HDI includes components for health, economy and education and the only nation in Latin America and the Caribbean to out rank Cuba on the overall HDI and the education index is Chile. (Chile and Cuba rank 43rd and 44th on the HDI and 49th and 50th on the education index).
Cubans are generally well educated, but are they "trained, demanding users of technology?" Internet connectivity is nearly non-existent in Cuba and relatively few have sporadic, slow access to the Cuban intranet, but there a long history of promoting computer use and literacy among the youth. In 1987, Fidel Castro agreed to create 32 Youth Clubs of Computing and Electronics (YCCs) for promoting and teaching computer technology. As shown below, he expressed his envy of the young people at the dedication the YCC headquarters, which occupied the ex-Sears store in Havana (prime real estate) and his support has continued.
Fidel at the opening of the YCCs
Today there are 611 YCCs and over 2.25 million adults and kids have completed their courses. The YCCs are distributed throughout the island, not concentrated in one or a few large cities -- a common pattern in developing nations.
Of course, Cubans have some Internet and intranet experience. Most is at work or school, but there are also paid Internet access "CyberPoints." It is noteworthy that ETECSA (Cuba's single provider of Internet and telephone access) plans to increase the number of Cyber Points from 155 to over 300 by late this year -- evidently there is demand for slow Internet connectivity even if it costs as much as a week's salary per hour. (I would be curious to know who the users are and how they are using it. That would be an interesting survey).
In my 2011 report, I compared the UCI curriculum with the computer science curriculum at Carnegie Mellon University and found that
The work-study balance – ten semesters of professional practice and three studying business topics – differentiates UCI from U. S. universities. Students are expected to work on useful applications in education, health, sport, and online government -- writing software, building Web portals and developing multimedia products.
While they may not have experience with the latest technology, Cuban graduates should be ready to do practical work and good students may gravitate toward startups since state enterprises are the only alternative source of employment.
Even without domestic users, outsourcing can help bootstrap a tech community and Cuba's outsourcing prospects look good. Cuba is close to the large U. S. market, is in the Eastern time zone and there are many Cuban expats in the U. S. and elsewhere with professional and family ties to Cuba. Cuban developers have been doing small-scale, sub rosa work for U. S. firms for some time, but now that we have approved work by independent Cuban programmers (as opposed to state enterprises) that work can expand openly.
UNDP HDI and education ranks
I checked the 2014 A.T. Kearney Global Services Location Index™ and it turns out that the top ranked nation for outsourcing is India and Mexico (4th) and Chile (13th) are among the top 15. Given their UNDP Human Development and Education indices, Cuba looks like a formidable competitor to all three.
I've focused on tech and education to this point -- what about Cuban culture?
Of necessity, Cubans are resourceful. The old cars that Cubans have managed to keep running are as well-known as Cuban cigars. Homebrew computers are common. Before the government cracked down, homemade TV dishes were ubiquitous in Havana. There are even illegal satellite links in Cuba. These are a few examples of Cuban resourcefulness in the face of constraints. For more, watch this video:
The legacy of years of socialist rhetoric might also contribute to the success of a startup community. The early ARPA/Internet community or Silicon Valley in the 70s and 80s provide examples of success that was partially due to a somewhat idealistic, cooperative culture and a sense that the participants were doing something important.
When the PC revolution was just getting under way, computer clubs sprung up around the country. One, the Homebrew Computer Club (HCC) met in an auditorium at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley. The meetings featured a "random access" session during which people stood up to ask for help or offer to share information. At one meeting I attended, Steve Wozniak offered schematics and a parts list for anyone who wanted to build a copy of the single-board computer he had designed, while his partner Steve Jobs stood at a table showing off wire-wrapped versions of the machine. After the meetings, "competitors" met at a hamburger place in Menlo Park (I forget its name) to talk about their latest S-100 but boards.
Random access session at the Homebrew Computer Club
Might the Merchise Meetup and the YCC Freeware Festivals turn out to be Cuba's HCC?
I've been painting a rosy picture -- talking more about what I would like to see happen than what I think will happen -- "Silicon Malecón" faces many obstacles.
Readers of this blog well know the sad state of Cuban Internet connectivity. As neuroscientist Frances Colón, acting science and technology adviser to Secretary of State Kerry says, "More than anything else, Cuban science and technology entrepreneurs need connectivity to finally move into the 21st century of scientific discoveries and technology development."
A lack of capital is another obvious problem, but Cuban entrepreneurs with good ideas and organizations will be able to attract capital if government polices encourage foreign investors. That being said, the Cuban economy is already looking up with easing of tension with the U. S. and Cuba may find it desirable to finance significant parts of its own Internet infrastructure.
A lack of business and marketing experience may also hinder Cuban entrepreneurs. That should be mitigated by close ties between Cubans and the expat community. Business schools are also eyeing Cuba. There is also Proyecto Cuba Emprende, which offers "training and advisory services to Cuban entrepreneurs who wish to start or improve a small business in order to contribute to the development of an entrepreneurial culture, social progress and to improve the quality of their lives."
The biggest problem for the startup community may be Cuban bureaucracy and the power of incumbent state software enterprises. Will the government stifle startups with micromanagement and regulation (as exemplified by their list of jobs eligible for self-employment) and taxes? Will politically entrenched state software enterprises like Albet and Desoft view startups as competitors to be beaten or will they be a training ground for future entrepreneurs? (This is similar to the question of the infrastructure policies of ETECSA).
I've mentioned some of the things the Cuban startup community has going for and against it. Let's hope it takes off.
----- Update 5/26/2015
The Merchise Startup Circle meetup was held last Saturday. Over fifty people came -- there would have been more if they had had more space (and a larger pizza and beer budget :-).
An elegant meetup setting
Two of the organizers, Alex Medina and Medarado Rodriguez welcomed the attendees (the third, Rodney Hernandez was out of the country and could not attend).
They will now allow cooperatives a year to hire workers (it had been 3 months) and are studying 205 proposals to create new cooperatives.
Since 2012, 498 private non-agricultural cooperatives have been established (347 are still operating) and the authorities are presently studying 205 proposals to create new cooperatives.
Cooperatives are allowed to have Internet accounts, but do any readers know if any of these cooperatives -- existing or proposed -- involve technology or the Internet?
The Miami Herald has published an article profiling several Cuban software startups. It describes their applications and the difficulties they face. A "window" is starting to open for Cuban software startups -- how long until it is closed by established competitors -- from the US and other nations or Cuban state software enterprises?
----- Update 8/4/2015
The second Merchise Meetup was held last Saturday. Read about the meetup here, see photos of the meetup here and check out all the tweets here.
It sounds like it was a great meeting with good speakers and a lot of enthusiasm. Here are a few quotes from folks who were there:
Cuba still lacks high-level Internet infrastructure, but it is full of programming talent.
I attended the event it was great. The technical knowledge is very strong.
Lots of smart people *already* doing lots of interesting things... instead of just waiting :-)
Bold prediction we will see better startups out of #habana than #miami in the coming years
It was great talking with so many engaged and interesting people. Thank you for your contribution and support!
Fantastic to hear investment topics described in an enlightening and entertaining way.
Awesome words of startup wisdom by @ubaldo, co-founder of http://fonoma.com. Many thanks!
Awesome ... Over 50 techies for 5 hours.
----- Update 8/13/2015
The C.A.A. Foundation is sponsoring four Cuban student internships at a Manhattan tech incubator.
C.A.A. founder Miles Spencer, four Cuban interns and advisor John Caulfield, former chief of mission at the US Interests Section in Havana.
They are the first interns in the C.A.A. Innovadores program, which seeks to provide opportunity, networking, mentoring and resources for promising innovators in Cuba.
C.A.A.'s first initiative is "to offer Cuban Innovators fully underwritten opportunities to intern and study with some of the best incubators and boarding schools in the Science and Technology space in the United States."
Nearshore America has published a market research report on Cuba's IT infrastructure, policy and software development community.
The report is written for those interested in outsourcing IT work to Cuba and it costs $749, but the atypically interesting executive summary is free.
The report includes results of a survey of Cuban IT professionals (half of whom report that they are already doing work for foreign clients). Here are a couple of figures summarizing characteristics of the developers who were surveyed:
You should check the post out, but a couple of things caught my eye. It says that El Paquete is paying taxes in Cuba. We've speculated on reasons for government tolerance of El Paquete -- reducing demand for Internet access and providing employment -- and it seems the government is also sharing in the revenue through taxes. (There has even been speculaton that El Paquete is government run).
Revolico and CiberCuba pay taxes and employ people in Spain, where they were established. There was no mention of Vistar taxes, but it has 23 employees in Cuba. Revolico has 7 million page views per month, with 50% of the traffic from within Cuba. It has 25,000 ads daily and is profitable.
----- Update 12/2/2015
There will be a meetup in Miami featuring the founders of five Cuban startups: Hiram Centelles - Co-founder, Fonoma, Revolico & Yagruma, Marta Deus - Founder, Deus Expertos Contables, Yondainer Gutierrez - Founder, Alamesa, Ubaldo Huerta - Co-founder, Fonoma & Yagruma, and Elio Hector Lopez (el Transportador) - Creator, El Paquete Semanal. Ted Henken will be the moderator.
You can read about the Connecting Cuba meetup featuring five Cuban Internet entrepreneurs here and here or watch the following archived live-stream video.
Cuba plans to provide Internet connectivity to all schools at all levels during the next three years. We offer a few suggestions, based in part on the US experience of the 1980/90s.
Fernando Ortega, Director of Educative Informatics Services at the Cuban Education Ministry, has announced a plan for connecting Cuba's 295 high schools and 395 polytechnic institutes to the Internet during the next school year. During 2017 they plan to extend the education network to junior high schools, day-care centers and special schools and in 2018 the network will connect the remaining primary schools. They hope to connect 26,650 teachers to the Internet by next May.
This is an encouraging announcement, but it leaves many policy and technical questions unanswered, like:
Will the schools be connected to the international Internet or the Cuban intranet?
If connectivity is international, will it be over the undersea cable or satellite?
If the link is to the Internet, will sites be filtered out?
Will users be surveilled and tracked?
What will be the backbone technology and speed?
How fast will the backhaul links to the schools be?
Regardless of the answers to these questions, a school backbone and connectivity to it is only a small part of the networking of schools. What about school LANs? Curriculum? Teacher training and student expectations? Cuban schools are facing the same questions US schools and universities faced when first connecting to the Internet -- can they benefit from our experience?
In the late 1980s, the National Science Foundation connected all US colleges and universities to the Internet. (They also connected networks in many developing nations, including Cuba). They did this by establishing a backbone network (NSFNet) and gave each school a router and paid for a link to the backbone. That cost the US taxpayers $94.5 million, but it was just seed money.
The schools spent much more collectively -- hiring network technicians, building local area networks (LANs), buying computers and incurring overhead on all of that. Could Cuba do something similar -- connect schools to an education backbone and leave the rest to the schools themselves?
I reviewed the curriculum of Cuba's University of Information Science in a report I wrote in 2011. Compared to the US, the curriculum was relatively practical and it involved working on real-world projects. If the government of Cuba were to construct an educational backbone and provide a high-speed connection to each school, advanced university students could be deployed to schools where they would lead the installation of LANs by the students and faculty of the schools. (Note that idealistic, motivated graduate students implemented much of the ARPANet).
There was a major change between the time of John Gage's NetDay project and my student's dorm connectivity project -- WiFi equipment became available, making our task easier. Necessity being the mother of invention, it turns out that Cuba has experts in the deployment of modern WiFi LANs -- the people who have created mesh "streetnets". Cuba might also take a look at Google's experiments with high frequency wireless communication. Sun Microsystems is not longer with us, but might Google sponsor a Cuban NetDay?
A Cuban "NetDay" project would establish a LAN at relatively low cost and also provide initial training and involvement for the people who would eventually run and use the LAN.
What about computers? Mr. Ortega reports that there are about 30 students per computer in Cuban school labs and his plan is to replace them with tablets. I would think twice about those tablets.
But the biggest problem with the failed deployment in Los Angeles was not sub-optimal hardware, it was in software and curriculum. The tablets were to come with installed teaching materials provided by a single vendor. The tablets were "Trojan Horses" for the curriculum.
I would worry about something similar happening in Cuba -- top-down design and distribution of teaching material by experts at the Ministry of Education. Cuba has developed some educational software, but it is limited in scope and quantity and, more important, not Internet oriented. We are in the midst of a boom in MOOC-inspired online education and innovation in curriculum, technology and pedagogy. Cuba should look to the outside (the Khan Academy in Spanish would be a good place to start) and also encourage decentralized domestic development -- perhaps providing a hosted, Spanish-language "YouTube" for teaching material using Google and MIT's open source MOOC.org platform. (Better yet, that should be hosted by Google).
Without answers to the questions I raised at the start of this post, one cannot say what will happen with Cuba's school network. I've assumed the best intentions on behalf of the Cuban government and thrown out some relatively low-cost ideas, some of which were helpful in getting US schools online. Let's hope Cuban kids are enrolling in MOOCs and working their way through Khan Academy material before too long.
The US is interested in doing business with Cuba, but we are far from alone and we are late to the party. Cuba has a history of trade with Vietnam, China, Spain, France, etc. and visits from trade delegations have picked up.
The Cuban and Soviet economies were deeply intertwined before the Soviet breakup and on April 22 Russia and Cuba signed a five year deal for trade in the aeronautics, metallurgy, medicine, railway transportation and other sectors.
Russian and Cuban delegations met in Moscow.
The emphasis in US-Cuba trade discussions seems to be on the sale of US goods and services to Cuba rather than the other way around, but the Russian agreement includes the sale of Cuba-made pharmaceuticals to Russia, if they are found to be satisfactory in testing. Note that Russia is willing to purchase goods and services from Cuban-state enterprises while the US allows the purchase of goods and services from private Cuban enterprises, but not state firms.
Japan is also interested in doing business in Cuba. Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and on May 2 some thirty business people met with representatives of a dozen Cuban state firms to discuss possible business deals at The Cuba-Japan Business Forum.
Cuban and Japanese foreign ministers and their delegations met in Havana. Foto: ain.cu
Cuban debt came up as a possible barrier to trade. Forum President Tomoyoshi Kondo said that "once the issue of the Cuban debt is solved, the two countries will be able to discuss and talk about the future.” The issue of Cuban debt also arose around the financing of the ALBA undersea cable. I don't know the current situation, but a Wikileaked memo from 2010 stated that:
Payment problems continue for all countries. Despite once again restructuring all of its official debt in 2009, Japan has yet to see any payments.
Many nations are looking for business and trade opportunities with Cuba now that detente with the US appears likely. In the short run, Cuban debt and poverty may limit that trade, but improved relations with the US and Cuban economic reform will surely improve the Cuban economy.
